As an Orthodox Christian woman who has spent my past seven years in Jesuit Catholic education and surrounded by Catholics, the news of Pope Francis’ passing came as a significant jolt to me and those around me.
My undergraduate and graduate studies were at Boston College, and my professional career has led me to Loyola Marymount University, where my Orthodox identity has labeled me somewhat as the “beloved cousin of the East.” As our theological tenets align, mirrored by the warm relationship shared between Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew and Pope Francis, I found a home within these spaces while remaining an unyielding Orthodox Christian. As my years in Catholic spaces progressed, contoured largely by the progressivism of Jesuit teachings while undergirded by the larger Catholic Church, I felt Pope Francis’ presence and subsequent loss, now revealing this period of mourning, ambiguity as to what’s next, and the power vacuum to fill it. I’ve spent the past week accompanying Catholic lay people and Jesuit priests alike, sitting with them in their sorrow and joining in their wonder of what’s to come.
One of the most moving reflections I’ve heard was from a Catholic friend who expressed her significant fear rooted in the Church’s next steps. She and many other young lay Catholic women have since come forward within my circles in apprehension about their future relationship with the global Church, wondering where their place will be within it under new leadership. This fear, wrapped in distrust, revealed to me their perception of the past as quite the opposite. Pope Francis’s leadership created a global Church that young women, in positions much like my own, trusted, which affirmed their agency and ability to feel empowered by their religious institution. The fear of the future is begotten from a profound solace and safety of the past, showing the dimensions of Pope Francis’ ministry as deeply meaningful for folks particularly within this demographic. It is the power of his legacy that prompted me to consider its impact on Orthodox Christians.
Ethical Reflections
I can’t help but think about the divine telos of Orthodoxy — theosis, or “the realization of divine human communion which begins on earth and continues in eternity” — and its relationship to virtue ethics.[1] Virtue ethics, the Western ethical theory “most compatible with Orthodoxy’s normative vision,”[2] asks us as Orthodox Christians to habituate “excellent dispositions” or “dispositional states” of the soul and its various parts.[3] By cooperating with God’s grace, our human dispositions, through the development of the virtues, orient us toward deification. Within this framework, Catholic ethicist Daniel Daly extends the virtues into praxis, defining how virtues guide action — not merely analyzing past actions but steering moral agency toward particular ends. Choosing the right path towards deification requires cooperation with the grace God freely gives us, but “God’s grace does not hydraulically move one to discover which acts one should perform;” it is our job to discern that for ourselves.[4]
One prescription Daly offers in solving the ever-looming problem of choosing the right thing is “taking counsel with exemplars,” or exemplar ethics. This approach invites imagination, envisioning how an advanced moral exemplar might evaluate a particular action as virtuous or vicious, rather than merely replicating actions they’ve done.[5] Through this model, I find it important for me as an Orthodox Christian to take counsel with Pope Francis as a moral exemplar. I especially think of his proclamation “Todos! Todos! Todos!,” emphatically expressing that there is room for all within the walls of the Church, while prioritizing listening before prescribing. So, going forward, in taking counsel with him, I hope to open my arms wider and invite those on the margins into the life of the Church, into communal support and care, and to listen more intentionally … and hopefully habituate a little bit of Pope Francis’ spirit of emphatic welcome along the way.
Pastoral Reflections
My personal experience as a lifelong member of the Greek Orthodox Church has shown community to be at the centerfold of my Orthodoxy, particularly the ethic of welcome that treats the stranger as family which has contoured my spiritual journey. The passing of Pope Francis serves as a reinvigoration of this steadfast, unyielding, almost aggressively hospitable community of Orthodoxy grounded in our liturgical and sacramental engagement. Raven Porumb defines an “Orthodox Model of Practical/Pastoral Theology” as beginning with our attunement to our internal spiritual development in relation to the liturgical and sacramental life of the Orthodox Church.[6] This inward connection subsequently brings us into an upward connection with the Divine, into theosis.
The final step, for Porumb, is the springboard from being pulled upward to being pulled outward into community, a reality that deeply mirrors the lived experience of being an Orthodox Christian. This reminder of how our internal and upward relationships prompt outward considerations leaves us with a new task amidst our shared communities: loving our Catholic neighbors more boldly in their time of sorrow. As our Catholic siblings rest in a time of deep mourning and ambiguity, our pastoral obligation is to ensure our community-driven praxis extends into their circles, with special attention for those experiencing fear, dread, and uncertainty about what might come after an irreplaceable leader like Pope Francis.
Ecumenical Reflections
While past tension continues to color Catholic-Orthodox relations, Pope Francis’ legacy invites an era of renewal through deepened communication and reinvigorated ecumenism. The “dialogue of love” between our two Churches — put into action by Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras and exemplified by Pope Francis and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew — calls us not to let his legacy die with him, but to continue co-creating, with God, “a just and humane society in which no one will feel excluded and marginalized.”[7] Whether through interpersonal relationships with our Catholic siblings, theological discourse through the USCCB and similar organizations, or commitment to building a world that makes it easier to love our neighbor, it is my sincere hope that Pope Francis’ life and legacy leads us into a new era of partnership. Let us continue in the “dialogue of love” together, with renewed hearts and shared purpose. For reference to this article, click here.
